Historians of Esotericism: The Scholars Who Built the Field

The academic study of Western esotericism was built over the twentieth century by historians of science, philosophy, art and religion, from Lynn Thorndike and Frances Yates to Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin, and was established as a distinct discipline by Antoine Faivre in Paris and Wouter Hanegraaff in Amsterdam. Today it is an international field with university chairs, research centres, scholarly societies and journals, studying everything from Renaissance magic to contemporary occultism.

Pioneers in the history of science§

The first serious modern scholarship on esoteric material came from historians of science who refused to dismiss astrology, alchemy and magic as mere superstition. The American medievalist Lynn Thorndike (1882–1965) published A History of Magic and Experimental Science in eight volumes (1923–1958), surveying thousands of manuscripts and showing how intertwined magic and natural philosophy had been. His essay on the Ars Notoria is in the catalogue as Solomon and the Ars Notoria.

In the history of alchemy, scholars such as Julius Ruska, Paul Kraus and later Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, William Newman and Lawrence Principe transformed understanding of the Arabic and early modern chymical traditions. The anthropologists James George Frazer and, later, Keith Thomas, whose Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) studied magic in early modern England, provided wider social frameworks.

The Warburg Institute and the Renaissance§

The Warburg Institute, founded on the library of the Hamburg art historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929) and moved to London in 1933, became the centre of a remarkable school. Warburg himself studied the survival of astrological imagery in Renaissance art. D. P. Walker (1914–1985) wrote Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (1958), still a basic study of Renaissance magic.

Frances Yates (1899–1981) was the most influential figure of this circle. Her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) argued that Hermetic magic was a driving force of Renaissance thought and even of the scientific revolution; The Art of Memory (1966) and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972) extended her vision. The "Yates thesis" has been heavily criticised for overstating the role of Hermeticism in the origins of science, but her work made esoteric currents a respectable subject. In Italy, Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller similarly placed Ficino, Pico and Renaissance Platonism at the centre of intellectual history.

Scholem, Eranos and the religionists§

In Jerusalem, Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) founded the academic study of Jewish mysticism with works such as Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) and later studies of Kabbalah and Sabbateanism, setting a standard of philological rigour; see What Is Kabbalah?.

From 1933 the annual Eranos conferences at Ascona, Switzerland, organised by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn and long associated with C. G. Jung, brought together scholars of religion, myth and mysticism. Among them were Scholem, the historian of religions Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), author of The Forge and the Crucible (1956) on alchemy and metallurgy, and the French Islamicist Henry Corbin (1903–1978), who studied Persian mystical philosophy and the "imaginal world". Their approach, later called "religionist", sought the sacred meaning of esoteric traditions; it inspired many but was criticised by later historians for blurring scholarship and personal belief.

Faivre and the Paris chair§

The field acquired its first institutional base in Paris. In 1965 François Secret (1911–2003), an expert on Christian Kabbalah, was appointed to a chair of Christian esotericism at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE). In 1979 Antoine Faivre (1934–2021), a Germanist and specialist in Christian theosophy and Naturphilosophie, succeeded to a renamed chair in the history of esoteric and mystical currents in modern and contemporary Europe.

Faivre's definition of Western esotericism as a "form of thought" with six characteristics, set out in 1992, gave the field its first widely accepted working definition, discussed in defining esotericism. His successors at the EPHE, including Jean-Pierre Brach, continued the chair, and Faivre was closely associated with the journal Aries, which began in Paris in the 1980s and was relaunched as an international journal in 2001.

Hanegraaff, Amsterdam and Exeter§

Wouter J. Hanegraaff (born 1961), whose New Age Religion and Western Culture (1996) traced the New Age to Western esoteric roots, was appointed in 1999 to the new chair in the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, supported in its early years by the collector Joost Ritman's Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica. He edited the Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (2005) and in Esotericism and the Academy (2012) argued that esotericism is a category of "rejected knowledge".

In Britain, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (1953–2012), author of The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985) and The Western Esoteric Traditions (2008), founded the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism in 2005. Other important scholars of the founding generation include Joscelyn Godwin, historian of esoteric music, art and nineteenth-century occultism, and Brian Copenhaver, translator of the Hermetica (1992).

The current generation and the institutions of the field§

The field has grown steadily since 2000. The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) was founded in 2005 and holds biennial conferences; the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE) serves North America. Book series and journals, notably Aries and Correspondences, publish new research.

Contemporary scholars have widened the field's scope. Kocku von Stuckrad proposed a discourse approach; Marco Pasi, Henrik Bogdan and Egil Asprem have written on modern occultism, initiation and the relationship between esotericism and science; Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon (1999) set the history of modern Paganism on a scholarly footing; Alex Owen studied the Golden Dawn and modernity; and Richard Kieckhefer, Claire Fanger and Frank Klaassen opened up medieval ritual magic. Increasingly, researchers also study esotericism outside Europe and in global, colonial and digital contexts.

Practitioner-scholars and the question of objectivity§

Not all knowledge of esotericism came from universities. Practitioners such as A. E. Waite, G. R. S. Mead and Israel Regardie edited and translated important texts, and some modern scholars are also practitioners. The field has long debated how to balance sympathetic understanding with critical distance. Most academic researchers today adopt "methodological agnosticism", studying esoteric beliefs historically without either endorsing or debunking them, an approach also discussed in What Is Western Esotericism?.

Frequently asked questions§

Who founded the academic study of Western esotericism?§

Antoine Faivre is generally regarded as the founder of the modern discipline, through his Paris chair from 1979 and his 1992 definition of esotericism. Earlier scholars such as Frances Yates, D. P. Walker and Lynn Thorndike laid essential groundwork.

What was the Yates thesis?§

Frances Yates argued in the 1960s that Renaissance Hermetic magic was a major force in European thought and helped prepare the scientific revolution. Later historians have rejected her strongest claims about science, but her work transformed the study of Renaissance culture.

What is the Eranos circle?§

Eranos is an annual conference founded in 1933 at Ascona, Switzerland, where scholars such as C. G. Jung, Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin discussed religion, myth and mysticism. It shaped the "religionist" approach to esoteric traditions.

Sources and further reading§

• Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition — Frances A. Yates, 1964
• Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella — D. P. Walker, 1958
• Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism — Gershom Scholem, 1941
• Access to Western Esotericism — Antoine Faivre, 1994
• Esotericism and the Academy — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 2012
• New Age Religion and Western Culture — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 1996
• Religion and the Decline of Magic — Keith Thomas, 1971